DriveGleam: display your CPU, RAM and drive usage as icons in the system tray

I have an HP Pavilion notebook that sits in a docking station whenever it’s at home or at work (I have a docking station at each location…. heck, I’ve even got one (a third one) back at my place in Chicago for when I fly back there four or five times a year).

Consequently — at least until recently, and I’ll explain that in a moment — when the notebook is in one of the docking stations, I can’t see the little blue hard drive light on the lower-left-front of the notebook (it’s simply blocked, when it’s in the docking station, by its wraparound front lip/edge-thingy).

So I use DriveGleam… been using it since it was BETA (and boy, oh, boy was it ever buggy back THEN… but it’s MUCH better now).

Of course, when the notebook’s out of the docking station — like when I’m at someone else’s office or something — well, then, obviously I don’t need DriveGleam because I can see the hard drive light on the notebook… but I still let it load, what the heck.

You would not believe how difficult it is to find a product like DriveGleam that actually works properly, and is freeware. Believe me, I’ve tried them all… and I think, all things considered, that DriveGleam is best-of-breed… the best one (freeware one, at least) out there. I’m serious… I devoted an entire weekend, once, to seeing what all was out there, and trying every last thing I found. DriveGleam, all things considered, has no rival among the freeware competitors out there.

That said, there is an odd behavior that it sometimes does, and I haven’t figure it out yet. Basically, every once in a while, for several consecutive reboots, it will leave the configuration panel open on the screen, and I have to close it. But I’ve found that if I just pretent to change the configuration by changing something on it, then saving it, then changing it back… I dunno… most of the time, when next I restart the machine, DriveGleam starts behaving itself again. That is seriously the ONLY negative thing about it…

…er… well… and I also agree with the reviewer’s wish list.

And I’ll tell you something: DriveGleam is pretty accurate, too. What I mean is, that if I put the notebook out where I can see its hardware hard drive light, and I watch it out of the corner of my eye while I focus on the DriveGleam light in the system tray, they both flicker at about the same frequency, rate, etc. I mean, naturally, the hardware drive light is more accurate; but DriveGleam’s little system tray icon doesn’t miss too many flashes. If the little blue hardware drive light flickers three times, then DriveGleam’s system tray icon flashes three times… with each DriveGleam flash (or flicker or whatever you want to call it) only a tiny, tiny, miniscule fraction of a second behind the hardware drive light’s flashes/flickers.

So, DriveGleam can keep-up… which is one of the things I noticed that most of its competitors couldn’t do very well. Obviously, the faster the CPU, and the more RAM it’s got to work with, the more responsive it is… though that’s not to say that it needs a lot of RAM or a super-fast CPU to work well. All I’m saying is that DriveGleam obviously keeps-up better — matches the hardware drive light flicker-for-flicker better — on a 3GHz machine with 6GB of RAM than it does on a 1.6 GHz notebook with 2GB of RAM. I mean, that just makes sense. Nothing to be ashamed of there.

So, bottom line: DriveGleam’s a hot little utility. Seems to play nice with everything. I’ve run it on XP and Vista (but not Win7)… on both notebooks and desktops… and it works without a hitch on them all.

Now, all that said, as it turns out I kinda’ don’t need it anymore. I’ve added a cooling pad to each of the docking stations, and so now the notebook sits up a little higher… just high enough that I can see the hardware hard drive light peaking over the top of the docking station’s curved front lip/edge thingy. Hence, the I still have DriveGleam installed, I’ve told it to stop auto-loading when Windows starts.

I kinda’ miss it, though… though, that said, I’m glad to have the system tray real estate back.

By the way, I should point out, since my review is so enthusiastic: I have NOTHING to do with DriveGleam. Didn’t write it, and don’t know whomever did. I have no skin in the DriveGleam game. I’ve written this posting as I have — with its enthusiasm and whatnot — because that’s the way I write (informally, at least). Just Google me and look at the gazillions of other things I’ve written that are out there… comments to postings, Yahoo Answers… there’s TONS of it. And if you look at it, you’ll see that this is the way I write. So, fear not, I’m not shilling for DriveGleam. After 33 years (at this writing) in IT and management consulting, I could NEVER afford to trade away my objectivity to become a shill. DriveGleam’s just that good. Seriously.

For whatever that’s worth (which my ex-wife will happily attest ain’t much).

__________________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com

What about Process Explorer? It not only displays CPU usage, Physical RAM usage, Hard Drive access, and Commit Charge (which is virtual memory afaik), with tooltips: it even displays them all in history graphs as tray icons on the task bar. In Process Explorer, go to Options => Tray Icons, and decide which ones you want displayed.

nice program, only missing temp of drives.
for the rest, excellent + free = excellent++ =)